Vojtech Tuka

Vojtech Tuka (4 July 1880-20 August 1946) was the Prime Minister and Foreign Minister of the First Slovak Republic from 1939 to 1944 under Jozef Tiso during World War II, when poor health forced his resignation. He was succeeded by Stefan Tiso.

Biography
Vojtech Tuka was born on 4 July 1880 in Hegybanya, Hont County, in Austria-Hungary (present-day Stiavnicke Bane, Slovakia). He studied law and joined the Slovak People's Party after Czechoslovakia was created as an independent state in the 1918 Treaty of Versailles. In 1923 he founded the Rodobrana "Home Guard" of Czechoslovakia and he began a campaign for Slovakian independence from the Czechs. On 9 March 1939, Czechoslovakian troops moved into the Slovakia region to put down dissent against the unity of the present-day Czech Republic and Slovakia. On 14 March 1939 Jozef Tiso was proclaimed the Prime Minister of the First Slovak Republic by Adolf Hitler of Nazi Germany after German troops invaded and occupied Czechoslovakia, but in October he became the President and Vojtech Tuka was chosen as his Prime Minister due to his prewar activism.

Tuka became a major leader of the government and was the leader of the pogroms in Nazi-occupied Czechoslovakia against the Jews. Tuka was also the minister for Foreign Affairs, meaning that he could be held responsible for the foreign policies of the Nazi state of Slovakia. Under Tuka, the Slovaks launched an invasion of southern Poland in September 1939 alongside German Wehrmacht troops, and they assisted in the war on the Eastern Front against the Soviet Union after 21 June 1941. Tuka resigned from his office as Prime Minister due to ill health in 1944 and [Stefan Tiso]] replaced him in this post, and he was captured by the US Army in Austria while confined to a wheelchair. He was tried for war crimes and executed by hanging on 20 August 1946 for the massacre of Czechoslovakian Jews, gypsies, homosexuals, political opponents, crippled people (though he later became one), mentally-insane peope, and communists.